“The muffins are rolling.”

That’s the start to New York Times reporter John Schwartz terrific tale about his recent sojourn through Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. The frosted muffins are, of course, the electric-powered vehicles that look like they might have recently escaped from the latest Disney film.

Here’s more from Schwartz’s story:

Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, the company that publishes Make and Craft, said he felt echoes of the urge to transform tools and toys that he saw with the original personal-computer hobbyists in the 1970s and with the open-source software movement more recently. “We’ve ridden this wave before,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “We see hackers first, and then we see entrepreneurs and then we see it become part of the mainstream. And we’re still in that early hacker-enthusiast phase, but I’m really convinced that there is a manufacturing revolution on its way as part of what we’re seeing here.”

Which brings us back to the muffin cars. Keith Johnson and his daughter Karydis zip around the fairground in his cupcake-shaped runabout, which conceals a tiny electric all-terrain vehicle and the handlebars from a Hello Kitty bicycle. The “frosting” is sprinkled with oversize Prozac capsules. His head, and his baby’s, poke up out of a hole in the frosting.

His is one of more than a dozen cupcakes at the Faire. A founder of the cupcake makers group, Greg Solberg, is an engineer with Tesla Motors, a company that makes high-performance electric cars. Mr. Johnson is a specialist in preserving digital materials at Stanford University. The community of cupcake-car makers once rigged each car with speakers tied into an FM radio transmission system so they could all play the same music, whether the soundtrack from Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade or Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”

You can read the rest of the story here. (A free sign-in may be required. ) You’ll also find terrific audible interviews with Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make magazine, Keith Johnson of Acme Muffineering, and more. Great photos, too.

Peter DeSilva for the New York Times

Publishers Weekly discusses the impact Wikipedia’s success has had on the reference book industry. And Missing Manual author John Broughton was interviewed for this cover story:

John Broughton, author of “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual,” a recent addition to O’Reilly’s popular Missing Manual series, says that publishers can’t ignore Wikipedia’s influence: “I don’t see a way out for content that competes directly with Wikipedia at this point. They can’t compete with an infinite talent pool. And it’s current.”

The segments of the category hit hardest by the increasing availability of information online are the core staples of reference.

The implications are obvious for multi-volume encyclopedias, which everyone concedes have largely seen their day. Take Encyclopedia Americana, produced by Scholastic Library Publishing since it acquired Grolier in 2000. Until 2007, the 30-volume set was updated each year. The publisher has said that there likely won’t be a multi-volume print version when the encyclopedia is updated in 2009, with focus instead shifting to the online version.

Read all of Gwenda Bond’s thought provoking article–Fighting Facts and Figures–here.

Mark Frauenfelder, Make magazine’s editor in chief, posted the preface of Robert Bruce Thompson’s latest book, the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry: All Lab, No Lecture recently on Boing Boing.

In the preface Thompson tells about receiving his first chemistry set from his parents one bright Christmas morning in 1964. “It was a Lionel/Porter/Chemcraft chemistry set, and the exact model I’d asked for. The biggest one, with dozens of chemicals and hundreds of experiments. Glassware, an alcohol lamp, a balance, even a centrifuge. Everything I needed to do real chemistry. I instantly forgot about the rest of my presents, even the BB gun. I started reading the manual, jumping from one experiment to another,” he explains.

Thompson, the author of Building the Perfect PC, Astronomy Hacks, and the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, also explains that he set out to write this book after a conversation with his friend and neighbor Jasmine Littlejohn.

“If Jasmine was to do more than make pretty colors and stinky smells, if Jasmine was to do real chemistry, she’d need more than just access to a lab. She’d need detailed instructions and some sort of structured plan to guide her through the learning process. She’d need to learn how to use the equipment and how to handle chemicals safely. She’d need well-designed experiments that focused on specific aspects of laboratory work. In other words, she’d need a home chemistry lab handbook, one devoted to serious chemistry rather than just playing around.

My first thought was to get Jasmine one of the classic home chemistry books published back in the 30s, 40s, or 50s. Some of those were excellent, but all of them required chemicals—such as benzene, carbon tetrachloride, salts of mercury, lead, and barium, concentrated nitric acid, and so on—that were once readily available but are now very expensive or difficult to obtain.

In one sense, that wasn’t really a problem. I already had most of that stuff in my lab. But even the best of those old books would have required some serious red-lining before I’d have turned Jasmine loose with it. One, for example, suggested tasting highly toxic lead acetate (also known as “sugar of lead”) to detect its sweetness. Others were a bit casual about handling soluble mercury compounds or contained experiments that were potentially extremely dangerous.

You can read the rest of Thompson’s inspiring preface here.

Thompson’s new guide is for responsible teenagers to adults, folks who want to learn about chemistry by doing real, hands-on laboratory experiments. It isn’t for those who want to make fireworks or explosive.

I’m also giving away a free copy of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry. All you have to do is post a comment about your favorite chemistry set and/or experiment and/or why you think hands-on chemistry education is important by May 12, 2008. You may be the lucky winner of my fair but arbitrary selection.

In other news, Kevin wins a copy “Google Apps Hacks” for posting his favorite Google app hack. Check out Kevin’s winning hack and the all the other hacks here.

I worked for three days at Maker Faire and I couldn’t feel more energized and happier. As only one of several enticements, I was handed a Flip to try my hand at video interviewing. If you’re interested, you can view my very first attempts at videography (or perhaps we should say Flip-e-ography) here.

And for those looking for a deeper discussion about the Maker Faire phenomenon, check out O’Reilly editor Andy Oram’s thoughts on the Radar blog:

I found many science projects at Maker Faire more aesthetically satisfying than the self-consciously mind-altering artworks I’ve seem at some contemporary art shows. Many artists seem to lose their intuition for balance and beauty when trying to make a point, and their explorations of the promising channels offered by technology can end up clogged in its pipes. There is some computer-generated and networked art that is beautiful, thought-provoking, or both, but I’m been disappointed too often by art shows. Maker Faire focused on the fun first of all, the achievement second, and the aesthetics third. Ironically, this worked better.

Read the rest of Andy’s thought-provoking blog post here.

If you couldn’t make it to Maker Faire, here’s a terrific time lapse video from Maker Faire Day 1:

To get in on the Maker Faire action and the fun, head over to www.makezine.com!

Tim O’Reilly, Richard Scoble, Mitchell Baker, and seven other leading figures in the Web community talked to the BBC recently about their hopes for the future of the web.

Tim O’Reilly:

We created the first commercial website with a special dispensation from the National Science Foundation. We were interested in online publishing and we were thinking of how to get books online and then the web came along and we thought: ‘Oh my god this is the answer to our prayers’.

The web was this promise of a universal platform for information and it was just transformative and so exciting to see that potential come into play.

The fact that Tim Berners-Lee gave it away was so critical to that. l imagine if someone tried to commercialise it, maybe it would have taken off but that was what Microsoft and AOL tried to do.

Free is such a powerful force in innovation.

Read the read the rest of Tim’s interview and the other nine interviews here.

What makes millions of people build an encyclopedia for free? How can you make Wikipedia better and contribute to the world of free knowledge? Visit with the makers, the hackers, and the volunteers of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia at Maker Faire this weekend and find out. Makers are invited to get a hands-on tutorial for wiki editing, upload photos from the event for creative commons distribution, and help create the Maker Faire entry on Wikipedia.

“This is the Wikimedia Foundation’s first major public event of this sort,” explained Jay Walsh, who heads up communications for the WikimediaFoundation.org. “We’ve been involved in our own, volunteer-powered conferences in the past, including the Wikimania Conference, this year in Alexandria Egypt.”

At the Wikimedia Foundation/Wikipedia booth you’ll find a terrific giveaway, the “Wikipedia Reader’s Guide: The Missing Manual” by registered Wikipedia editor John Broughton. The giveaway from O’Reilly’s Missing Manual division can help you get started on your Maker Faire entry.

So be sure to stop by Booth 108 Expo Hall to meet Wikipedia volunteers and members of the Missing Manual team. I’ll be at Maker Faire, too, helping out with PR. I hope to see you there!

Maker Faire is May 3 & 4 at the San Mateo County Fairgounds. Find more info here.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, we launched O’Reilly InPractice. Our new consulting and training division aims to help companies reposition themselves and thrive in a user-centered economy. Here KRON 4’s Brian Shields talks with George LeBrun, chief strategy officer/general manager of O’Reilly InPractice, and Joshua Ross, vp of the new division, about what they’re up to.

When Google lifted traditional office applications into its “cloud” of fast network connections, powerful servers, and seemingly limitless storage, it changed the way many of us create, organize, and share information. And, as Press Democrat reporter Nathan Halverson noted in a recent story, these free new computer applications help keep costs down.

“Unlike traditional software that is installed on your computer, these new programs run over the Internet,” Halverson wrote. “That means no installation discs, and no worrying if your computer has enough memory. If your computer can run a Web browser such as Internet Explorer, it can run these applications.”

And for those hoping to get the most out of Google Apps, German native Philipp Lenssen offers timely guidance. In his new book–“Google Apps Hacks”–Philipp explains that working in the cloud offers a whole lot more than simply the freedom from desktop software. With Google Apps, collaborating with others near and far becomes much easier and more fun. I talked to Philipp recently about his approach to writing “Google Apps Hacks.” (Read to the end of the interview for info about how to win Philipp’s new book!)
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SP: Why did you write “Google Apps Hacks?”

I have a great interest in Google’s approaches and tools. In 2003 I started covering them nearly daily for the weblog, Google Blogoscoped, which also kind of led to my writing the book, “55 Ways to Have Fun With Google.” When O’Reilly contacted me for a new book project covering the Google tools, I didn’t really have to think twice. It sounded like great fun–and a year afterwards I know it was indeed great fun.

Congratulations to George LeBrun, who takes the reins of a newly launched O’Reilly division–O’Reilly InPractice. This new consulting and training division, announced today at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, aims to help companies intelligently and successfully reposition themselves in the global network—and thrive in a user-centered economy. And George, a top media and communications authority and now Chief Strategy Officer/General Manager of O’Reilly InPractice, is already working with companies to help them deliver positive experiences for their customers by applying transformative Web 2.0 tactics.

This week George and his team are in San Francisco attending Web 2.0 Expo. But before George headed off, I got a chance to talk to him about his career and why he’s excited about leading O’Reilly InPractice.

SP: George, tell me a little about yourself, and your family, and what your life is like in Texas.

I’ve spent the last 25 years in the world of media and entertainment. I moved to San Antonio about 8 years ago when I was the CEO of an ISP called Vox4. I live there with my wife Deanna and daughter Alexandra (who is 12). We love the people and life in San Antonio. My daughter is a very gifted swimmer and I’m already hoping she will end up swimming for Stanford.

SP: You have a glamorous background as a Hollywood writer/director/producer. Who did you work with?

I was lucky to have mentors like Ed Zwick from Thirtysomething and Brian Grazer from Imagine Entertainment. They’re icons that were always very secure in their talent and creativity and weren’t afraid to share that with others.

SP: So as a Hollywood insider, how did you get involved in emerging technology?

When the word “interactive” was first bantered about, I got very interested in the marriage of content and technology. I moved from more traditional creative roles to more senior management roles and I have been focused there ever since.

SP: What excites you the most about heading up the O’Reilly InPractice team?

The economy that we’re moving deeper into now–which many call the experience economy, is truly revolutionary–not evolutionary. It will have more profound changes on how companies do business than any other economy in the last 100 years. So it’s a very interesting time to be working in this area right now. At my consulting company we were in the field operationalizing many of the Web 2.0 concepts with clients. I saw an opportunity to take what we were already doing and partner with O’Reilly to scale the business. O’Reilly has been spreading the knowledge of innovators for a long time and has built an amazing culture that Josh Ross and I are excited to be a part of.

SP: How did you meet Josh Ross and what will his role be?

I met Josh working on an engagement with Accenture. I immediately saw this brilliant guy who truly gets this space and understands that it’s really consumers that are driving this new economy. Although I run the group, Josh is a true partner in building the business from every perspective.

SP: What is one of the most significant effects of emerging trends & technologies?

In the last 30 months, they have brought about a significant power shift from companies to customers. Customers have more choices in products and services than at any other time in history. They have more information to make buying decisions and they are using each other as filters of trusted information more than any other time in history. The result is that they think and buy differently and their loyalties are changing. Today’s customers are looking for companies to be authentic and to deliver experiences through their products and services that trigger long-lasting meaning with them as a customer.

SP: If you could tell companies to do just one thing they need to do now to improve outreach to their customers, what would that be?

Become digitally literate about the Social Web. Companies need to move from having a group of experts in an area to a company wide fluency–in a new language if you will–that will help them become more participatory with their customers and employees.

Learn more about what George and Josh are up to at the O’Reilly InPractice website, inpractice.oreilly.com. And find more information about the O’Reilly InPractice launch from the press release.

O’Reilly’s digital media evangelist Derrick Story got a chance recently to interview three of the four authors of a timely new book, “Subject to Change.” You’ll hear Adaptive Path’s Brandon Schauer, David Verba, and Peter Merholz talking with Derrick about how prosperous businesses can — and should — use customer experiences to inform and shape the product development process, from start to finish. Click here to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Inside Digital Media Podcast Series via iTunes.

Jim Elferdink, author of “Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual,” fills us in on the coolest new features that Office for Windows can’t match. Here are some of the best:

Publishing Layout view. If you use Word to create formatted documents like letters and brochures, you’ll find it so much easier to do now in the new Publishing Layout view than in the old Page Layout view. Publishing Layout view is actually quite similar to Pages; both are very usable. It’s a huge boon for Word people—if you haven’t bought Pages, now you won’t have to!

MyDay. I really enjoy Entourage’s MyDay feature. Assuming you’re not working on a laptop that doesn’t have screen space to spare, I recommend keeping MyDay open in the corner of your screen. That’s what I do! It helps me keep track of my appointments and schedule. If you’ve got appointments every 20 minutes or just a lot going on in your day, it’s great to have it all at a glance. It also helps you remember to go pick up the kids. (And you can feel superior to your Windows friends. There’s nothing resembling MyDay in Office for Windows.)

You’ll find the rest of Jim’s reasons to upgrade here. And if you upgraded to Office 2008 for Mac, please tell us about your favorite new features. You just may receive a free book.

The Lightroom Adventure crew posted a new photo gallery. Lightroom Adventure Gallery 2 contains images taken mostly from Tasmania’s east coast.

View more images here. (Use the drop down menu when you get to the Gallery page to navigate to other galleries.)